One World Trade Center design responsible for commute mess

As if the average New Yorker’s commute wasn’t fraught enough, 1 World Trade Center’s design sent ice shards plummeting over 1,000 feet onto the nearby PATH station and 9/11 memorial pool Monday morning, disrupting transportation services.

The falling ice led to a morning closure of streets, the PATH station and the memorial pool Friday morning around 8:45 a.m., and service was suspended to Newark and Hoboken, officials told the New York Daily News. The sloping design of the tower made the situation worse, witnesses said, sending the shards flying off the building’s sloping sides “like a ski jump for falling ice,” the News said.

“The ice just comes down the side and shoots off,” one PATH worker, who declined to share his name, told the Daily News.

No injuries were reported, as arriving PATH travelers were redirected into Brookfield Place among the unfinished plywood stores and lobbies. The station reopened just under an hour later at around 9:30 a.m., but the north pool of the World Trade Center memorial remained shuttered because of what officials called “hazardous conditions.”

Still, one unnamed building executive told the News that the flying icicles were just a reality of daily life in New York.

“When you have tall glass buildings and icy conditions, that ice is going to start falling,” the executive told the Daily News. “It happens all over town.” [NYDN] — Julie Strickland